Xie Lingyun, knowledgeable about the principles of both Buddhism and Daoism, merges them with Confucianism in his religious works.

The scion of an aristocratic house associated with the displaced southern court, he has been an official under the Eastern Jin and Liu-Song dynasties.

His literary reputation, however, derives from his poetry, particularly his evocation of a spiritual presence in the wild southern landscape.

His refined, imagistic verse has set the fashion for his age, prompting early critics to prize his shanshui (“mountain and stream”) landscapes above the more pastoral tianyuan (“field and garden”) scenes depicted by Tao Qian, his countryman and contemporary.

Indeed, Xie's poems outnumber those of other Six Dynasties poets in the Wenxuan (“Literary Anthology”), the sixth-century canon that will define later Chinese literary tastes.

Factional intrigues have lately disrupted his career, leading to his frequent dismissal and eventual execution in exile at Canton in 433.

Early European travelers had reached China overland by traveling thousands of miles through Mongol- or Muslim-controlled territory in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, but Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, during the Age of Discovery, will arrive to China's southeastern coast in their own boats from Portuguese-controlled Malacca or the Spanish Philippines.

Francis Xavier, since arriving in Japan in 1549, has learned the local language and spent the past two years establishing missions; he has also translated a catechism.

Fernão Mendes Pinto meets Xavier again, working for him for a time, and decides to return home to Portugal with the fortune he has gained during his voyages.

He first undergoes conversion to the Society of Jesus and donates a large sum of his wealth to the Society itself, becoming a brother.

Xavier returns with Pinto to Malacca and then to Goa, but stays only a few months before departing for China.

He arrives at Sancian (Shangchuan Dao), an island not far from Guangzhou (Canton), but dies here on December 3, 1552, at the age of forty-six.

The evacuation of China’s southeast coast, following prolonged earlier years of miseries, has had a profound effect on the lives of the population and on the pattern of future settlement.

The survivors' hardships did not end when they returned to take up their interrupted lives in their old homes, for it is recorded that destructive typhoons in 1669 and 1671 destroyed the new houses in many places.

The English East India Company receives Chinese permission to build a trading station at Canton in 1684.

China having claimed control of Taiwan in 1683, the Qing government has become open to encouraging foreign trade.

Guangzhou has quickly emerged as one of the most adaptable ports for negotiating commerce and before long, many foreign ships are coming here to procure cargos.

Portuguese in Macau, Spanish in Manila, and Armenians and Muslims from India are already actively trading in the port by the 1690s, when the French and English British East India Company's ships begin frequenting the port.

China in 1693 concentrates all its foreign trade to Guangzhou, forbidding European ships to land anywhere else.

Tobacco is frequently mixed with other herbs at this time (this practice will continue with clove cigarettes to the modern day), and opium is one component in the mixture.

Tobacco mixed with opium is called madak (or madat) and had become popular throughout China and its seafaring trade partners (such as Taiwan, Java and the Philippines) in the seventeenth century.

China under the Qing Dynasty has opened herself to foreign trade under the Canton System through the port of Guangzhou (Canton), and traders from the British East India Company begin visiting the port by the 1690s.

Due to the growing English demand for Indian tea and the Chinese Emperor's prohibition of English commodities other than silver, English traders resort to trade in opium as a high-value commodity for which China is not self-sufficient.

The British traders have been purchasing small amounts of opium from India for trade since Ralph Fitch first visited in the mid-sixteenth century.

Trade in opium is standardized, with production of balls of raw opium, 1.1 to 1.6 kilograms, thirty percent water content, wrapped in poppy leaves and petals, and shipped in chests of sixty to sixty-five kilograms (one picul).

Chests of opium are sold in auctions in Calcutta with the understanding that the independent purchasers will then smuggle it into China.

The British East India Company opens its first trading office in Canton, China and begins importing opium.

British shipping dominates the opium trade out of Calcutta to China.

The annual amount of Indian-grown opium imported into China is about 1,000 chests in 1767.

The Company does not carry the opium itself but, because of the Chinese ban, farms it out to country traders, private traders licensed by the company to take goods from India to China.

The country traders sell the opium to smugglers along the Chinese coast.

The gold and silver the traders receive from these sales are then turned over to the Company.

In China, the company uses the gold and silver it receives to purchase goods that can be sold profitably in England.